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Wheels Off with Rhett Miller

Alexis Krauss (Sleigh Bells): Creativity, Instinct, and the Long Game

Wheels Off with Rhett Miller

Rhett Miller

Music, Performing Arts, Arts

4.9609 Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2026

⏱️ 34 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Alexis Krauss of Sleigh Bells joins Rhett to talk about making music for 17+ years, trusting instinct over trends, and navigating anxiety, identity, and the pressures of the modern music industry. Follow Alexis @alexiskrauss Follow Sleigh Bells @sleighbells Follow Rhett @rhettmiller Wheels Off is hosted and produced by Rhett Miller. Executive producer is Kirsten Cluthe, Studio Kairos. Music by Old 97’s. Episode artwork by Mark Dowd. Show logo by Tim Skirven. Watch the podcast on Spotify, and listen wherever you get your podcasts. You can also ask Alexa to play it.   Revisit previous episodes of Wheels Off with guests Rosanne Cash, Rob Thomas, Jeff Tweedy, Lucinda Williams, Stewart Copeland, Jennifer Egan, Nick Hornby, and more. If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating or review. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to Wheels Off, a show about the messy reality of the creative life.

0:04.8

I'm Rhett Miller.

0:06.5

That's when it got wheels off.

0:09.6

We started up and we ain't going to starve.

0:12.6

Oh, I like you.

0:13.6

I could not.

0:15.1

That's when they got wheels off.

0:17.7

Alexis Krauss of the rock duo Slavelles. I've heard them described as a noise pop duo Sleigh Bells.

0:26.1

These kind of labels get a little tricky for me. Man, she's so great. The band is great as well.

0:33.4

I was familiar with them before I realized that she lives in my hood, in the Hudson Valley.

0:40.0

And she's right around the corner for me.

0:44.6

I'm out on tour right now, so we didn't get together in real life, rather via the magic of unstable internet connections.

0:53.3

And she's submitted to the wheels off treatment, and you guys are all the magic of unstable internet connections. And she's submitted to the wheels off treatment,

0:56.1

and you guys are all the better for it,

0:58.7

because Alexis Krause has a lot of great thoughts.

1:02.2

She has a great perspective on stuff.

1:05.3

Her system of making music with Derek is super interesting to me.

1:09.7

Her whole creative process is very interesting.

1:12.1

In fact, her path is fascinating. I didn't bring it up during the interview because it's not

1:18.8

about me, but it reminded me in some ways of my own. We both started out as very young performers

1:25.7

and kind of figured out what this job was before we figured out

1:29.4

what this world was, what this life was. So it's a weird way to back into a life in art

...

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